After some research online (google and Youtube) I've discovered that this is beyond my expertise.

I've duel booted before, however Win8 does something with their Bios that prevents the system from booting from a disc or usb drive.

If anyone has info on this please fill me in. Keep in mind that you will be telling a newbie how to accomplish this. If you can, can you give step by step directions or point me to a site that does so in clear, no techno babble?

I don't think win 8 did that. Just go in bios settings then go in boot menu and just see the boot device priority and set USB device on top. Or on startup just choose the option of boot menu by pressing the appropriate key and select USB device..